En route we called in at a couple of spots. The first, the Mackenzie River Rainforest walk was a fizzer as the area is still "closed for public safety". It appeared that a lot of signs had been erected about danger etc and random trees chopped down but little else done. I suspect the area will be officially closed for a long while as parts of the boardwalk will have been compromised and that will cost a motza to rebuild.
The second area was the Cabbage Tree Palms walk which was open as it hadn't burnt. From memory this was on the edge of the fire, and rainforest usually doesn't ignite without great provocation. It was a lovely area.
Where we parked the car we found a good specimen of Acmena smithii (Lilly pilli) ...
As far as we could observe neither of these were being raided by frugivorous birds.
Proceeding along the walk (short at 400m, but probably wheelchair accessible - if fitted with mud tyres) we found some other interesting vegetation including tree ferns (Cyathea australis).
The palms (Livistona australia) visible were not in huge numbers.
Letting a hobby-horse out of the corral, it is tiresome to find that taxonomists seem to have renamed this species to "Cabbage Fan-palm". I am annoyed about the constant faffing about with scientific names, but enraged by these denizens of ivory towers interfering with common names.
This young palm - across the road from the official clump - offers hope for the colony continuing.
A couple of shots of Cabbage-tree Creek.
This tree seemed to be a contender for most burls per unit area.
There were a few birds around and, as usual in rainforest, mostly well hidden from view. Frances did spot 3 Eastern Whipbirds foraging and shortly afterwards a brown bird revealed enough of itself to be identified as a Bassian Thrush. Sewing-machine calls indicated Brown Gerygone, in surprisingly large numbers.
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